Point guard Cedric Bozeman ““ the most highly-regarded of
the three true freshman recruits on the UCLA basketball team
““ surely has.
Following the Bruins last game at the Maui Invitational, he sat
in the back of the press room while a reporter, not aware that
Bozeman was present, asked Bruin head coach Steve Lavin why Bozeman
was progressing more slowly than the team’s other two
freshmen ““ forward Andre Patterson and guard/forward Dijon
Thompson.
This was something new. When Bozeman was a prep All-American at
Mater Dei High School in Santa Ana, Calif., rarely did someone say
anything critical of him.
Welcome to big-time Division I college basketball.
Bozeman shyly tilted his head down as Lavin defended his play,
looking as if didn’t want to be there.
But a week after the incident, Bozeman hardly remembered the
reporter’s comment.
“I didn’t pay attention to it,” he said.
“It comes with the territory. At UCLA, if you have a bad game
the press is all over you.”
For Bozeman, Patterson and Thompson, dealing with the media has
been the least of their problems.
Bozeman, of course, tore the meniscus in his right knee and will
be sidelined for another month or so.
But even before that, Bozeman, like Patterson and Thompson, was
having difficulty on the court.
The college game, far different from the game they played in
high school, has befuddled the freshmen at times. The game, which
used to unfold in slow motion for them at the prep level, suddenly
sped up, became more intense.
“Uh…” Thompson said, laughing, when asked how
comfortable he felt on the court after the first two weeks of the
season.
“There’s a little bit more to get used to,”
continued Thompson, who has seen time at both guard positions and
small forward. “It’s difficult. It’s a lot
harder.”
Yet, while they have looked clueless during some spurts, all
three have also given indication that they can eventually help
their team be among the elite squads in college basketball.
“All three freshmen are going to contribute this
year,” UCLA head coach Steve Lavin said. “Cedric
received all of the hype coming in, but Dijon and Andre are just as
special.”
The trio received an early education, both in the classroom and
on the court, when they arrived at UCLA in early August for summer
school classes. They spent a lot of time playing pick-up ball in
the Men’s Gym, where NBA players such as Chris Webber, Paul
Pierce, Baron Davis, Corey Maggette and Tracy Murray frequently
dropped in.
In those pick-up games, Thompson said, he and his two incoming
classmates learned “a lot of tricks.”
“Cheap stuff,” Thompson said. “They were
elbowing, pushing and holding all the time and nobody would see
them do it.”
After facing the likes of Webber on a daily basis, joining Jason
Kapono and company for the Bruins’ fall practice wasn’t
as big an adjustment as it normally would have been. Even then, the
transition wasn’t smooth.
“It wasn’t that easy,” Patterson said.
“Here, you’re with 12 guys who can really play. In high
school, you could do whatever you wanted to.”
Just as the freshmen had to adjust to the different level of
play, they also had to get used to a higher level of discipline.
Thompson, who wasn’t used to taking instructions from anyone,
was surprised in one of the team’s early practices when Lavin
yelled at him for not being low enough in his defensive stance
during drills.
“I was like, “˜Wow, why me?'” said
Thompson, who didn’t think he was doing anything wrong.
With practices closed to the public and to the media, no one
outside of the basketball program knew how the freshmen were
performing. But according to their teammates and coaches, the group
looked gifted, the most gifted of them being Bozeman, the only one
of the batch slated to start.
Then the Golden Child went down.
In UCLA’s first exhibition game of the season, Bozeman
bruised his tailbone and exited the contest early, never to return
to the court that day. He sat out the next exhibition game as
well.
His first extended live-game experience, therefore, came in
Maui, where he shot poorly and turned the ball over 11 times in
three games.
Was he really the point guard that everyone had been talking
about?
Internet message boards were soon filled with postings written
by people who had previously never seen Bozeman play, yet who felt
disappointed with his performance.
His outings may not have been viewed as critically as they were
had it not been for those of Patterson and Thompson, whose
energetic play off the bench looked promising.
Patterson vanquished any doubts about his ability, showing an
uncanny talent to score from inside. Thompson, meanwhile, used his
versatility to get minutes at various positions. Both players said
the two exhibition games allowed them to better acclimate
themselves to the speed of the college game.
“The exhibition games really helped me out,”
Patterson said. “I got a little more confidence each time I
was out there.”
Bozeman never got those opportunities, and to make matters worse
for him, he started the games ““ at the most difficult
position on the court.
“It set me back a little bit,” Bozeman said of his
bruised tailbone, which still bothered him a bit in Maui. “I
didn’t practice much for two weeks.”
That isn’t to say Bozeman’s shortcomings are
necessarily curable. His outside shooting is indefensible, and in
Maui, he didn’t look like much of a penetrator.
On a few occasions in UCLA’s Nov. 28 loss to Pepperdine,
however, he managed to slash into the lane and make the opposing
defense collapse in spite of the swelling in his knee that occurred
upon his team’s return from Maui. Sure, the progress may have
been slight, but it was there. Improvement will take time,
especially now that Bozeman is injured.
And Lavin is willing to live with that. Or rather, he has to
force himself to live with that. He needs to be patient not only
with Bozeman but with the other two freshmen as well.
Bozeman is his only legitimate option at point guard and he will
need Patterson and Thompson to come off the bench to score an extra
point or grab an extra rebound.
“They’re going to go through some stretches that are
tough,” Lavin said. “But the only way to get the kids
experience is to play them.”